KKNew Christian Doppler Laboratory ‘AIMStream’ at the University of Klagenfurt
A new Christian Doppler Laboratory (CD Laboratory) is being established at the University of Klagenfurt. ‘AIMStream’ will focus on the next generation of video streaming – from enhanced user experiences and resilient, globally scalable transmission to immersive 3D content. The funding proposal was recently approved. The laboratory, which is set to run for seven years, will be headed by Farzad Tashtarian, a senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Klagenfurt’s Department of Information Technology.
Over several decades, researchers at the university have built up world-leading expertise in video streaming technologies. With AIMStream, which is funded by the Christian Doppler Research Association (CDG), the Klagenfurt team now aims to take the next step towards entirely new video experiences for viewers.
The laboratory, which will launch in the last quarter of 2026, involves two major industry partners. Bitmovin, a spin-off from the University of Klagenfurt, was already a partner in the CD Laboratory ATHENA, which concludes at the end of September 2026. The project is now also joined by a further international partner, Tencent. Tencent is participating through its Media Lab in California, which specialises in immersive multimedia technologies such as 3D and 4D, as well as cloud infrastructure for streaming applications.
AIMStream will comprise three core work packages, collectively addressing various application-oriented basic research challenges. ‘We want to understand what can be done to keep viewers truly engaged with a video,’ explains project lead Farzad Tashtarian. Beyond simply improving playback quality, the team is investigating how user engagement can be modelled and actively enhanced using AI-driven approaches – for example through individually tailored content. Because robust models in this area are virtually non-existent, genuine basic research lies at the very heart of this work.
A second key objective is to improve reliability and scalability. From cloud-based encoding right through to viewers’ screens, the streaming pipeline must remain stable and resilient even during major global events, when millions of people are watching at the same time. Farzad Tashtarian sums up the challenge: ‘Well-known frustrations such as delays or buffering during live sports broadcasts show just how relevant this research is in the real world. We don’t want to hear the neighbours cheering when we haven’t even seen the goal yet.’
As a brand-new field of research – and one ideally suited to the collaboration with Tencent – the laboratory will also devote the coming years to the transmission of three-dimensional, interactive content, for example for virtual reality headsets. In the future, viewers should be able to move freely within streaming content and interact with it. Farzad Tashtarian emphasises: ‘This requires many times the bandwidth and computing power of conventional 2D video, raising entirely new questions about quality, resource consumption, and network infrastructure.’
AIMStream is planned to run for seven years, with rigorous evaluations by the CDG after two and five years. The project will fund two cohorts of three PhD students each, as well as six Master’s theses and numerous opportunities for internships and Bachelor’s theses within the computer science degree programmes at the University of Klagenfurt. Ultimately, the knowledge generated by the project will not only be shared through academic publications, but also applied directly within the partner companies and channelled into potential new spin-offs.
